It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.
They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue
like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors,
like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the
animalized _nuclei_ or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course,
are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in
the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught
here,—that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling
teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road,
this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind
in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with
a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a
mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.
walden_pond_map
As I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I
surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in ’46, with
compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many stories told
about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly
had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will
believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to
sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this
neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to
the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for a
long time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with
watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the
fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes “into
which a load of hay might be driven,” if there were any body to drive
it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal
Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a
“fifty-six” and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find
any bottom; for while the “fifty-six” was resting by the way, they were
paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly
immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers
that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though
at an unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone
weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the
stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the
water got underneath to help me.
Sometimes, in a summer morning,having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrisetill noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around orflitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in atmy west window, or the noise of some travellers wagon on the distanthighway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasonslike corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of thehands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, butso much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientalsmean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, Iminded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light somework of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothingmemorable is accomplished.
Sounds
But while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic,
and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but
dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language
which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is
copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays
which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the
shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the
necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history,
or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best
society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the
discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a
reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before
you, and walk on into futurity.
I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did
better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice
the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or
hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer
morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway
from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and
hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the
birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the
sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s
wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I
grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better
than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time
subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance.
I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking
of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day
advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now
it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of
singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.
As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so
had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my
nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any
heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the
ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is
said that “for yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one
word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for
yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day.”
This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the
birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have
been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is
true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his
indolence.
I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were
obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that
my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel.
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before,—a discovery that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.
By long years of patient industry and reading of
the newspapers—for what are the libraries of science but files of
newspapers—a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory,
and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into the
Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse and
leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,—Go to grass. You have
eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop. The very
cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of May; though
I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn and
fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.
A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his
knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being
ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a
subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he
who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head
in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest
that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more
definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the
insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before—a discovery that
there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot
know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely
and with impunity in the face of the sun: ?? t? ????, ?? ?e????
???se??,—“You will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing,”
say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we
may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience,
but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery
certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before
that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist—and with respect to
knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty
to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the
law-maker. “That is active duty,” says the Vishnu Purana, “which is
not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all
other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the
cleverness of an artist.
As for Doing-good,that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried itfairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agreewith my constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberatelyforsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands ofme, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a likebut infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preservesit.
But all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I
confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic
enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among
others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have
used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some
poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do,—for the devil
finds employment for the idle,—I might try my hand at some such pastime
as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this
respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining
certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain
myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they
have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my
townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their
fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less
humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for any
thing else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are
full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am
satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I
should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling
to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from
annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater
steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not
stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work,
which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say,
Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely
they will.
I am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many
of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something,—I will
not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,—I do not hesitate
to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it
is for my employer to find out. What _good_ I do, in the common sense
of that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part
wholly unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such
as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with
kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to preach at all
in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good. As if the
sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a
moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin
Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and
tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily
increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such
brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in
the mean while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it
good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going
about him getting good.
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or gradually leaving off palm-leaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes be content with less?
It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor
the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too,
to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of
every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the
world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the
white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition
of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea
Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact
with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people’s rulers
are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only
proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need
refer now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple
exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the
South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in _moderate_
circumstances.
Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are
actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that
they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to
wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or,
gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain
of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is
possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we
have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for.
Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes
to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely
teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s
providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas,
and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should
not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I
think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as
messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in
my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable
furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular
allowance?—that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s,
in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At
present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good
housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not
leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora
and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s _morning work_ in this
world?
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most mens, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature.
I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who
will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance
build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest,
without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live,—if,
indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find
their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition
of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of
lovers,—and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not
speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and
they know whether they are well employed or not;—but mainly to the mass
of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of
their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some
who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they
are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that
seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who
have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it,
and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.
If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in
years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are
somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly
astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of
the enterprises which I have cherished.
In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to
improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the
meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the
present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for
there are more secrets in my trade than in most men’s, and yet not
voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly
tell all that I know about it, and never paint “No Admittance” on my
gate.
I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still
on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them,
describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one
or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even
seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to
recover them as if they had lost them themselves.
To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible,
Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any
neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No
doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise,
farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to
their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his
rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be
present at it.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
We read that the traveller asked the boy
if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had.
But presently the traveller’s horse sank in up to the girths, and he
observed to the boy, “I thought you said that this bog had a hard
bottom.” “So it has,” answered the latter, “but you have not got half
way to it yet.” So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but
he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a
certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will
foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would
keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the
furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so
faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work
with satisfaction,—a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke
the Muse. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should
be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the
work.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a
table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious
attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry
from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I
thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me
of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an
older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they
had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and
“entertainment” pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he
made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for
hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow
tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I
called on him.
How long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty
virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin
the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in
the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with
goodness aforethought!
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Some dreams are divine, as well as some
waking thoughts. Donne sings of one
“Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray.”
Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less
afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream,
than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is
our atonement, measures the degree by which this is separated from an
actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have
been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could
discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness had not its
foundation in us, why are we grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves
naked and acting out our real characters, even more clearly than we see
others awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would compel even
its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect its ever-wakeful
authority; as we are accustomed to say carelessly, we should never have
_dreamed_ of such a thing. Our truest life is when we are in dreams
awake.
“And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor people’s troublous cryes,
As still are wont t’ annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemyes.”
THURSDAY
“He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone,
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker.
* * * * *
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night;
There the red morning touched him with its light.
* * * * *
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth,—his hall the azure dome;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there’s his road,
By God’s own light illumined and foreshowed.”
EMERSON.
When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint, deliberate, and ominous
sound of rain-drops on our cotton roof.
It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.
The dull distinguish only races or nations, or at most
classes, but the wise man, individuals. To his Friend a man’s peculiar
character appears in every feature and in every action, and it is thus
drawn out and improved by him.
Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of men.
“He that hath love and judgment too,
Sees more than any other doe.”
It will make a man honest; it will make him a hero; it will make him a
saint. It is the state of the just dealing with the just, the
magnanimous with the magnanimous, the sincere with the sincere, man
with man.
And it is well said by another poet,
“Why love among the virtues is not known,
Is that love is them all contract in one.”
All the abuses which are the object of reform with the philanthropist,
the statesman, and the housekeeper are unconsciously amended in the
intercourse of Friends. A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the
compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate
them in us. It takes two to speak the truth,—one to speak, and another
to hear. How can one treat with magnanimity mere wood and stone? If we
dealt only with the false and dishonest, we should at last forget how
to speak truth. Only lovers know the value and magnanimity of truth,
while traders prize a cheap honesty, and neighbors and acquaintance a
cheap civility. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties
are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to
expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only
copper. We ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly,
sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not even
hear this prayer. He says practically, I will be content if you treat
me as “no better than I should be,” as deceitful, mean, dishonest, and
selfish. For the most part, we are contented so to deal and to be dealt
with, and we do not think that for the mass of men there is any truer
and nobler relation possible. A man may have _good_ neighbors, so
called, and acquaintances, and even companions, wife, parents,
brothers, sisters, children, who meet himself and one another on this
ground only.
Truth strikes us from behind and in the dark, as well as from before and in broad daylight.
SUNRISE
_Oct. 30._ First we have the gray twilight of the poets, with dark and
barry clouds diverging to the zenith. Then glows the intruding cloud in
the east, as if it bore a precious jewel in its bosom; a deep round gulf
of golden gray indenting its upper edge, while slender rules of fleecy
vapor, radiating from the common centre, like light-armed troops, fall
regularly into their places.
SAILING WITH AND AGAINST THE STREAM
_Nov. 3._ If one would reflect, let him embark on some placid stream,
and float with the current. He cannot resist the Muse. As we ascend the
stream, plying the paddle with might and main, snatched and impetuous
thoughts course through the brain. We dream of conflict, power, and
grandeur. But turn the prow down stream, and rock, tree, kine, knoll,
assuming new and varying positions, as wind and water shift the scene,
favor the liquid lapse of thought, far-reaching and sublime, but ever
calm and gently undulating.
TRUTH
_Nov. 5._ Truth strikes us from behind, and in the dark, as well as from
before and in broad daylight.
STILL STREAMS RUN DEEPEST
_Nov. 9._ It is the rill whose "silver sands and pebbles sing eternal
ditties with the spring." The early frosts bridge its narrow channel,
and its querulous note is hushed. Only the flickering sunlight on its
sandy bottom attracts the beholder. But there are souls whose depths
are never fathomed,—on whose bottom the sun never shines. We get a
distant view from the precipitous banks, but never a draught from their
mid-channels. Only a sunken rock or fallen oak can provoke a murmur,
and their surface is a stranger to the icy fetters which bind fast a
thousand contributory rills.[5]
DISCIPLINE
_Nov. 12._ I yet lack discernment to distinguish the whole lesson of
to-day; but it is not lost,—it will come to me at last. My desire is to
know _what_ I have lived, that I may know _how_ to live henceforth.
SIN DESTROYS THE PERCEPTION OF THE BEAUTIFUL
_Nov. 13._ This shall be the test of innocence—if I can hear a taunt,
and look out on this friendly moon, pacing the heavens in queen-like
majesty, with the accustomed yearning.
As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at...
If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and
sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is
merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any
thing is professed and practised but the art of life;—to survey the
world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural
eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or
mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites
to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond
he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm
all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar.
Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,—the boy who
had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted,
reading as much as would be necessary for this,—or the boy who had
attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while,
and had received a Rodgers’ penknife from his father? Which would be
most likely to cut his fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on
leaving college that I had studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one
turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the _poor_
student studies and is taught only _political_ economy, while that
economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even
sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he
is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt
irretrievably.
As with our colleges, so with a hundred “modern improvements”; there is
an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The
devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early
share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are
wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious
things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which
it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston
or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph
from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing
important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man
who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but
when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his
hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and
not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and
bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the
first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear
will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all,
the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most
important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round
eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried
a peck of corn to mill.
One says to me, “I wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to
travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the
country.
Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.
I one evening overtook one of my
townsmen, who has accumulated what is called “a handsome
property,”—though I never got a _fair_ view of it,—on the Walden road,
driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could
bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered
that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so
I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the
darkness and the mud to Brighton,—or Bright-town,—which place he would
reach some time in the morning.
Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes
indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is
always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the
most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make
our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest
to all things is that power which fashions their being. _Next_ to us
the grandest laws are continually being executed. _Next_ to us is not
the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but
the workman whose work we are.
“How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven
and of Earth!”
“We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear
them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things,
they cannot be separated from them.”
“They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their
hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer
sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile
intelligences. They are every where, above us, on our left, on our
right; they environ us on all sides.”
We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting
to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while
under these circumstances,—have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius
says truly, “Virtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of
necessity have neighbors.”
With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a
conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their
consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent.
God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality which surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
So soul,” continues the Hindoo philosopher, “from the
circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until
the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows
itself to be _Brahme_.” I perceive that we inhabitants of New England
live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate
the surface of things. We think that that _is_ which _appears_ to be.
If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where,
think you, would the “Mill-dam” go to? If he should give us an account
of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in
his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail,
or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is
before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of
them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind
the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity
there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and
places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the
present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the
ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble
only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that
surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our
conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us.
Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never
yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least
could accomplish it.
Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off
the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the
rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without
perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring
and the children cry,—determined to make a day of it. Why should we
knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed
in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the
meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest
of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor,
sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the
engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the
bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they
are like.
I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day; how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see where your main roots run.
We are apt to speak vaguely sometimes, as if a
divine life were to be grafted on to or built over this present as a
suitable foundation. This might do if we could so build over our old
life as to exclude from it all the warmth of our affection, and addle
it, as the thrush builds over the cuckoo's egg, and lays her own atop,
and hatches that only; but the fact is, we--so thin is the
partition--hatch them both, and the cuckoo's always by a day first,
and that young bird crowds the young thrushes out of the nest. No.
Destroy the cuckoo's egg, or build a new nest.
Change is change. No new life occupies the old bodies;--they decay.
_It_ is born, and grows, and flourishes. Men very pathetically inform
the old, accept and wear it. Why put up with the almshouse when you
may go to heaven? It is embalming,--no more. Let alone your ointments
and your linen swathes, and go into an infant's body. You see in the
catacombs of Egypt the result of that experiment,--that is the end of
it.
I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many
trivial affairs even the wisest man thinks he must attend to in a day;
how singular an affair he thinks he must omit. When the mathematician
would solve a difficult problem, he first frees the equation of all
incumbrances, and reduces it to its simplest terms. So simplify the
problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real. Probe the
earth to see where your main roots run. I would stand upon facts. Why
not see,--use our eyes? Do men know nothing? I know many men who, in
common things, are not to be deceived; who trust no moonshine; who
count their money correctly, and know how to invest it; who are said
to be prudent and knowing, who yet will stand at a desk the greater
part of their lives, as cashiers in banks, and glimmer and rust and
finally go out there. If they _know_ anything, what under the sun do
they do that for? Do they know what _bread_ is? or what it is for? Do
they know what life is? If they _knew_ something, the places which
know them now would know them no more forever.
This, our respectable daily life, on which the man of common sense,
the Englishman of the world, stands so squarely, and on which our
institutions are founded, is in fact the veriest illusion, and will
vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision; but that faint glimmer of
reality which sometimes illuminates the darkness of daylight for all
men, reveals something more solid and enduring than adamant, which is
in fact the cornerstone of the world.
When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.
Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be
seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master
doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to
diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of
them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy
messenger! What a worthy messenger!” The preacher, instead of vexing
the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the
week,—for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not
the fresh and brave beginning of a new one,—with this one other
draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, “Pause!
Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?”
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is
fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow
themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we
know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’
Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right
to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are
unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have
any permanent and absolute existence,—that petty fears and petty
pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always
exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and
consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their
daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on
purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true
law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily,
but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I
have read in a Hindoo book, that “there was a king’s son, who, being
expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester,
and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong
to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father’s
ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the
misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a
prince. So soul,” continues the Hindoo philosopher, “from the
circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until
the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows
itself to be _Brahme_.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day.
According to Pliny, there is a stone in Arabia called Selenites,
“wherein is a white, which increases and decreases with the moon.” My
journal for the last year or two, has been _selenitic_ in this sense.
Is not the midnight like Central Africa to most of us? Are we not
tempted to explore it,—to penetrate to the shores of its lake Tchad,
and discover the source of its Nile, perchance the Mountains of the
Moon? Who knows what fertility and beauty, moral and natural, are there
to be found? In the Mountains of the Moon, in the Central Africa of the
night, there is where all Niles have their hidden heads. The
expeditions up the Nile as yet extend but to the Cataracts, or
perchance to the mouth of the White Nile; but it is the Black Nile that
concerns us.
I shall be a benefactor if I conquer some realms from the night, if I
report to the gazettes anything transpiring about us at that season
worthy of their attention,—if I can show men that there is some beauty
awake while they are asleep,—if I add to the domains of poetry.
Night is certainly more novel and less profane than day. I soon
discovered that I was acquainted only with its complexion, and as for
the moon, I had seen her only as it were through a crevice in a
shutter, occasionally. Why not walk a little way in her light?
Suppose you attend to the suggestions which the moon makes for one
month, commonly in vain, will it not be very different from anything in
literature or religion? But why not study this Sanscrit? What if one
moon has come and gone with its world of poetry, its weird teachings,
its oracular suggestions,—so divine a creature freighted with hints for
me, and I have not used her? One moon gone by unnoticed?
I think it was Dr. Chalmers who said, criticising Coleridge, that for
his part he wanted ideas which he could see all round, and not such as
he must look at away up in the heavens. Such a man, one would say,
would never look at the moon, because she never turns her other side to
us. The light which comes from ideas which have their orbit as distant
from the earth, and which is no less cheering and enlightening to the
benighted traveller than that of the moon and stars, is naturally
reproached or nicknamed as moonshine by such.
The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.
He thought the scent a more oracular inquisition than the
sight,—more oracular and trustworthy. The scent, of course, reveals
what is concealed from the other senses. By it he detected earthiness.
He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost the only kind of
kindred voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well, was so happy in
her solitude, that he became very jealous of cities, and the sad work
which their refinements and artifices made with man and his dwelling.
The axe was always destroying his forest. “Thank God,” he said, “they
cannot cut down the clouds!” “All kinds of figures are drawn on the
blue ground with this fibrous white paint.”
I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished manuscripts, not
only as records of his thought and feeling, but for their power of
description and literary excellence.
“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout
in the milk.”
“The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted.”
“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon,
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the
middle-aged man concludes to built a wood-shed with them.”
“The locust z-ing.”
“Devil’s-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook.”
“Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.”
“I put on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt crackling of their
leaves was like mustard to the ear, the crackling of uncountable
regiments. Dead trees love the fire.”
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
“The tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the
leaves.”
“If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight, I must go to the
stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.”
“Immortal water, alive even to the superficies.”
“Fire is the most tolerable third party.”
“Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that
line.”
“No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech.”
“How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the shell of the
fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?”
“Hard are the times when the infant’s shoes are second-foot.
Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.
They atone for their producing nothing by a brutish respect
for something. They are as simple as oxen, and as guiltless of thought
and reflection. Their reflections are reflected from other minds. The
creature of institutions, bigoted and a conservatist, can say nothing
hearty. He cannot meet life with life, but only with words. He rebuts
you by avoiding you. He is shocked like a woman.
Our ecstatic states, which appear to yield so little fruit, have this
value at least: though in the seasons when our genius reigns we may be
powerless for expression, yet, in calmer seasons, when our talent is
active, the memory of those rarer moods comes to color our picture and
is the permanent paint-pot, as it were, into which we dip our brush.
Thus no life or experience goes unreported at last; but if it be not
solid gold it is gold-leaf, which gilds the furniture of the mind.
It is an experience of infinite beauty on which we unfailingly draw,
which enables us to exaggerate ever truly. Our moments of inspiration
are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for
those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever
and anon reminded of them. Their truth subsides, and in cooler moments
we can use them as paint to gild and adorn our prose. When I despair
to sing them, I will remember that they will furnish me with paint
with which to adorn and preserve the works of talent one day. They are
like a pot of pure ether. They lend the writer when the moment comes
a certain superfluity of wealth, making his expression to overrun and
float itself. It is the difference between our river, now parched and
dried up, exposing its unsightly and weedy bottom, and the same when,
in the spring, it covers all the meads with a chain of placid lakes,
reflecting the forests and the skies.
We are receiving our portion of the infinite. The art of life! Was
there ever anything memorable written upon it? By what disciplines
to secure the most life, with what care to watch our thoughts. To
observe what transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart
of me! I do not remember any page which will tell me how to spend this
afternoon.
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.
The
stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright and enduring as our
fairest and most memorable experiences. “Let the immortal depth of your
soul lead you, but earnestly extend your eyes upwards.”
As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, so the most
excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence is audible to all
men, at all times, and in all places. She is when we hear inwardly,
sound when we hear outwardly. Creation has not displaced her, but is
her visible framework and foil. All sounds are her servants, and
purveyors, proclaiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare
mistress, and earnestly to be sought after. They are so far akin to
Silence, that they are but bubbles on her surface, which straightway
burst, an evidence of the strength and prolificness of the
under-current; a faint utterance of Silence, and then only agreeable to
our auditory nerves when they contrast themselves with and relieve the
former. In proportion as they do this, and are heighteners and
intensifiers of the Silence, they are harmony and purest melody.
Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and
all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety
as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not
daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we
may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum,
where no indignity can assail, no personality disturb us.
The orator puts off his individuality, and is then most eloquent when
most silent. He listens while he speaks, and is a hearer along with his
audience. Who has not hearkened to Her infinite din? She is Truth’s
speaking-trumpet, the sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which
kings and courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked
by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations have been made,
and just in proportion as men have consulted her oracle within, they
have obtained a clear insight, and their age has been marked as an
enlightened one. But as often as they have gone gadding abroad to a
strange Delphi and her mad priestess, their age has been dark and
leaden. Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield any
sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is ever sounding and
resounding in the ears of men.
A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent lyres are
struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest which belongs to our own
unwritten sequel, to the written and comparatively lifeless body of the
work.
I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
Even Mahomet knew that God did not make this world in
jest. It makes God to be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of
pennies in order to see mankind scramble for them. The world’s raffle! A
subsistence in the domains of Nature a thing to be raffled for! What a
comment, what a satire, on our institutions! The conclusion will be,
that mankind will hang itself upon a tree. And have all the precepts in
all the Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable
invention of the human race only an improved muckrake? Is this the
ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to
get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would, perchance,
reward us with lumps of gold?
God gave the righteous man a certificate entitling him to food and
raiment, but the unrighteous man found a _fac-simile_ of the same in
God’s coffers, and appropriated it, and obtained food and raiment like
the former. It is one of the most extensive systems of counterfeiting
that the world has seen. I did not know that mankind were suffering for
want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very
malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a
great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.
The gold-digger in the ravines of the mountains is as much a gambler as
his fellow in the saloons of San Francisco. What difference does it
make, whether you shake dirt or shake dice? If you win, society is the
loser. The gold-digger is the enemy of the honest laborer, whatever
checks and compensations there may be. It is not enough to tell me that
you worked hard to get your gold. So does the Devil work hard. The way
of transgressors may be hard in many respects. The humblest observer who
goes to the mines sees and says that gold-digging is of the character of
a lottery; the gold thus obtained is not the same thing with the wages
of honest toil. But, practically, he forgets what he has seen, for he
has seen only the fact, not the principle, and goes into trade there,
that is, buys a ticket in what commonly proves another lottery, where
the fact is not so obvious.
After reading Howitt’s account of the Australian gold-diggings one
evening, I had in my mind’s eye, all night, the numerous valleys, with
their streams, all cut up with foul pits, from ten to one hundred feet
deep, and half a dozen feet across, as close as they can be dug, and
partly filled with water,—the locality to which men furiously rush to
probe for their fortunes,—uncertain where they shall break ground,—not
knowing but the gold is under their camp itself,—sometimes digging one
hundred and sixty feet before they strike the vein, or then missing it
by a foot,—turned into demons, and regardless of each other’s rights, in
their thirst for riches,—whole valleys, for thirty miles, suddenly
honeycombed by the pits of the miners, so that even hundreds are drowned
in them,—standing in water, and covered with mud and clay, they work
night and day, dying of exposure and disease.
